Health Anxiety, OCD, and the Trap of Constant Monitoring
If you live with health anxiety or health focused OCD, you may know this cycle well. A strange sensation appears in your body, your attention locks onto it, and suddenly your day revolves around checking, tracking, Googling, and monitoring for danger.
In today’s world, reassurance is always within reach. Apple Watches track heart rate and ECGs. Oura Rings monitor sleep, oxygen levels, and readiness scores. Fitness trackers buzz with alerts. Reddit threads offer endless “Does anyone else” stories. Google and even ChatGPT can provide instant answers.
And yet, rather than easing anxiety, many people with OCD find that these tools quietly make things worse.
When Health Tracking Becomes an OCD Compulsion
For someone without OCD, a wearable device might be used occasionally or out of curiosity. But for someone with health anxiety OCD, monitoring often shifts into something else entirely.
Common patterns include:
Constantly checking heart rate, oxygen levels, or sleep scores
Repeatedly running ECGs or looking for “irregular” readings
Feeling distressed when numbers change, even slightly
Avoiding activities that might raise heart rate “too much”
Needing devices nearby at all times “just in case”
What starts as being proactive about health slowly becomes a safety behavior, something the brain believes is necessary to prevent catastrophe.
The problem is that OCD does not get calmer when you give it more certainty. It gets stronger.
Why Wearables Can Worsen Health Anxiety OCD
OCD thrives on doubt and intolerance of uncertainty. Devices like Apple Watches and Oura Rings do not remove uncertainty. They multiply it.
Your heart rate naturally changes throughout the day. Sleep varies. Oxygen levels fluctuate. No body is perfectly consistent, yet OCD treats every variation as meaningful and dangerous.
Each time you check:
You teach your brain that monitoring is necessary for safety
You reinforce the belief that anxiety equals danger
You strengthen the urge to check again next time
Instead of building trust in your body, compulsive tracking trains your nervous system to stay hyper alert.
The Digital Reassurance Loop, Google, Reddit, and ChatGPT
Wearables are not the only tools OCD recruits.
Many people with health anxiety OCD spend hours:
Googling symptoms late at night
Reading Reddit threads for reassurance or comparison
Asking AI tools, including ChatGPT, if something is normal
Re asking the same questions in different ways, hoping for certainty
The relief that comes from reassurance is real, but it is temporary. Soon enough, doubt creeps back in.
“What if my situation is different”
“What if this is the one time it is serious”
This is how reassurance seeking becomes a compulsion. It keeps OCD in charge.
How ERP Looks Different from Stopping Cold Turkey
Exposure and Response Prevention, or ERP, the gold standard treatment for OCD, does not mean forcing yourself to throw away your Apple Watch overnight or never look anything up again.
Instead, ERP focuses on gradually reducing compulsions while increasing your tolerance for uncertainty.
That might look like:
Delaying checking your heart rate when anxiety spikes
Limiting how often you review health data
Allowing anxiety without immediately seeking reassurance
Practicing phrases like “I may never know for sure, and I can live with that”
The goal is not to convince yourself you are healthy. It is to stop organizing your life around proving that you are.
A Gentle Reality Check
If health monitoring, Googling, or reassurance seeking were the solution, your anxiety would already be gone.
The fact that you are still stuck does not mean you are failing. It means OCD has found tools that look responsible, normal, and even praised by society.
You are not broken for using them.
But you may be ready to relate to them differently.
Moving Toward Freedom from Health Anxiety OCD
Recovery often involves learning to trust your body again, not because it is perfect, but because uncertainty is survivable.
That means:
Letting sensations exist without solving them
Allowing anxiety to rise and fall on its own
Choosing values based living over symptom monitoring
With the right support and treatment, many people find that their world gets quieter, not because they finally found the right data, but because they stopped feeding OCD’s demand for certainty.
If you struggle with health anxiety or OCD and feel trapped by constant checking and reassurance seeking, working with an OCD informed therapist can help you step out of the cycle and back into your life.
You do not have to monitor your way to safety.
You can learn to live, even with uncertainty.
Ready to Take the Next Step
If this resonated with you, you do not have to figure this out alone.
I offer a free 15 minute consultation call where we can talk about what you are experiencing, explore whether OCD may be playing a role, and see if working together feels like a good fit. There is no pressure and no commitment.
Click the “Book free 15 minute consultation” button now and take the first step toward feeling more at ease in your body and your life.